The present invention relates to a networked presentation system for providing a presentation to a plurality of client nodes on a communications network such as the Internet, and more particularly to a presentation system wherein network transmission characteristics are utilized in determining the presentation materials presented at each client node during a performance of the presentation.
Interactive or live presentations via a telecommunications network (i.e., xe2x80x9ctelepresentationsxe2x80x9d such as teleconferences etc.) are becoming a viable alternative to face-to-face meetings due to the greater cost effectiveness of such telepresentations. However, there is still substantial expense in conducting such a telepresentation, particularly when the presentation members (i.e., presentation leaders and audience members) reside at a large number of geographically scattered sites. In particular, each of the sites may require specialized video conferencing systems with high data transmission lines for connecting the telepresentation members. Thus, due to the expense of provisioning and maintaining such networked conferencing systems, corporations typically have only a small number of such conferencing systems at strategically located telepresentation centers for conducting such telepresentations. However, there are numerous drawbacks to this approach, such as:
(1.1) The dedicated telepresentation centers are expensive to maintain;
(1.2) Presentation participants are still required to travel to these centers; and
(1.3) Potential members of such a presentation who are not able to access such a center are excluded from the presentation.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to have a network presentation distribution system that alleviates these drawbacks, wherein such a system would allow individuals to access and/or participate in a presentation using standard telephony and Internet network connections found in most offices and many homes.
The present invention is a network presentation distribution system for providing a presentation, via one or more communication networks, to a plurality of presentation members simultaneously. That is, the present invention distributes a presentation synchronously to presentation members via the one or more communication networks, wherein a communication network is defined as both the physical components and the communication protocol(s) utilized on the network components and wherein the term, xe2x80x9cpresentation membersxe2x80x9d (also denoted xe2x80x9cusersxe2x80x9d), includes both audience members (also denoted xe2x80x9cclientsxe2x80x9d) and presentation leaders. Moreover, the present invention provides interactive and/or real-time presentations to presentation members that are geographically scattered when each such member has access to one or more commonly available communication networks such as the Internet and a conventional telephony network for telephone-to-telephone voice communication. For example, the present invention may communicate the video portion of a presentation to a user site via the Internet (more generally, via any TCP/IP network) while a corresponding audio portion may be communicated to the user site via a conventional telephony network and a conventional telephone at the user site. However, other embodiments are also within the scope of the present invention. For example, both the video and audio portions of the presentation may be provided solely by a TCP/IP network such as the Internet, assuming that there is sufficient communication bandwidth to synchronize presentation transmissions to the presentation members.
The present invention distributes a presentation (synonymously also denoted a xe2x80x9cshowxe2x80x9d) to presentation members by a novel distribution of presentation materials among network server nodes of a TCP/IP network (hereinafter assumed to be the Internet for simplicity). That is, due to the typically xe2x80x9cburstyxe2x80x9d nature of transmissions between nodes of such a network, a version of the presentation may be accessed synchronously from different network server nodes, or different versions of the presentation may be accessed synchronously from one or more of the network server nodes. Thus, in one embodiment, the present invention provides for a plurality of at least one of:
(2.1) One or more network server nodes (each hereinafter also denoted synonymously as a xe2x80x9cnetwork server,xe2x80x9d xe2x80x9ccontent webserverxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9ccontent supplying nodexe2x80x9d, and xe2x80x9csupplying nodexe2x80x9d), whereby audience members receive presentation materials; and/or
(2.2) Different versions of the same presentation, accessible from the one or more of the content webservers, wherein each version may be for a different group of audience members such as a group for Japanese speaking audience members, or audience members affiliated with a particular organization.
Note that each of the one or more presentation versions includes one or more presentation segments (hereinafter also denoted simply xe2x80x9csegmentsxe2x80x9d) that provide different portions of the presentation. More precisely, subcollections each having one or more segments are provided as presentation xe2x80x9celementsxe2x80x9d in that each such subcollection is intended to be an indivisible portion of a presentation performance. Moreover, each version of a presentation typically has its subcollections of segments (i.e, presentation elements) ordered according to their presentation sequence. Moreover, substantially every segment (or subcollections thereof) in one version corresponds with a segment (or subcollections thereof) having the same presentation order, in each of the other versions. Thus, assuming corresponding segments (or subcollections thereof) in different versions have approximately the same presentation duration, any of the corresponding alternative segments (or subcollections thereof) from different versions can be presented as a replacement for another such corresponding segment (or subcollection) during the presentation. Thus, it is an aspect of the present invention to provide corresponding alternative segments (or subcollections thereof) having substantially different network transmission requirements so that such corresponding alternative segments (or subcollections thereof) can be substituted for one another depending on the performance of the communications network. For example, the segments (subcollections) of a first version of a presentation may require a network transmission rate sufficient for real time or animated video and the segments for another version of the presentation may only require a transmission rate sufficient for graphic slides. Thus, of a set of corresponding segments (subcollections), one segment (subcollection) may merely be an audio presentation via a telephone, whereas an alternative segment (subcollection) may be a multimedia presentation element that is a combination of one or more of the following types of HTML multimedia data: audio, images, animation or video, wherein such a multimedia element plays over a set period of time and can be as simple as a single image or as complex as a combination of images, audio, animation and video. Furthermore, segments may include interactive questions that audience members answer by, e.g., clicking on their display screens.
Note that it is also an aspect of the present invention that an ordering of predefined segments (or subcollections thereof) is capable of being presented and archived, and subsequently represented. Moreover, such an ordering can take into account alternative segments for the presentation. Thus, multiple sequentially- ordered scripts can be created so that the leader can choose to change scripts in the middle of a presentation based on user feedback. Accordingly, a presentation leader has the ability to stop presentation of a particular script and its current subcollection of segments and change to a different subcollection of segments to be delivered to the audience. Subsequently, the leader can then resume the initial script at any time.
Accordingly, to take advantage of this novel distribution of presentation materials, the present invention coordinates and controls computations and presentations at each client network node for each presentation audience member (hereinafter each such network node also may be synonymously denoted as a xe2x80x9cclient node,xe2x80x9d xe2x80x9cuser network nodexe2x80x9d or simply xe2x80x9cuser nodexe2x80x9d) substantially simultaneously. In particular, one or more presentation controlling network connected nodes (each hereinafter also denoted a xe2x80x9chost nodexe2x80x9d) is provided for transmitting presentation controlling commands to the client nodes so that there is retrieval of the presentation segments from one or more versions of the one or more network content server nodes depending on, for example, performance characteristics of network transmissions. Thus, it is an aspect of the present invention to dynamically and adaptively switch between content webservers and/or versions of the presentation according to network transmission characteristics at each client network node so that the clients at the client nodes have presented to them simultaneously, synchronously and in real time, corresponding (in content) segments of the presentation. For example, a first client (at a first client node) may experience the presentation as an ordered series of presentation segments, wherein the first and second ordered segments are presented in full animation, wherein the first of the ordered segments is obtained from a first content webserver and the second segment of the ordered segments is obtained from a second content webserver. Moreover, synchronously with the presentation to the first client, a second client (at a second client node) may experience the presentation in a slide show format from a third content webserver, wherein the initial two segments presented are corresponding alternative segments to the first and second segments presented to the first client. Additionally, a third client may synchronously experience the first segment of the presentation via network transmissions from the first content webserver but subsequently experience the corresponding slide show alternative to the second segment from the third content webserver due to, for example, network transmission slowdowns.
It is a further aspect of the present invention to synchronously provide audio and video portions of the presentation through different communication channels (a communication channel being a physical signal transport path together with a particular signal protocol). For example, in one embodiment of the present invention (denoted hereinafter the xe2x80x9cTelephony/Internet embodimentxe2x80x9d), the audio portion of the presentation is communicated audibly directly to a standard telephone using conventional voice grade telephony transmissions, and the corresponding video portion of the presentation is transmitted via a different network such as the Internet (more generally referred to herein as a xe2x80x9ccommunications networkxe2x80x9d) using, e.g., a modem to interpret the transmission signals.
It is a further aspect of the present invention to provide the same audio presentation portion to each client, and in this manner, maintain the continuity of the presentation between clients. Thus, regardless of the version of the video presentation provided, the clients have their presentations synchronized by at least experiencing simultaneously the same audio presentation.
It is also an aspect of the present invention to allow presentation members to communicate with one another. For example, in the Telephony/Internet embodiment, a client may communicate with other presentation members (including the presentation leader) during the presentation via the phone and/or by Internet messaging.
In providing the above capabilities of the network presentation distribution system of the present invention, one or more of the previously mentioned presentation controlling network nodes (xe2x80x9chost nodesxe2x80x9d) are utilized, wherein these nodes direct the flow of the presentation data between the presentation members. For example, in the Telephony/Internet embodiment, such a host node, upon receiving the presentation instructions from a presentation leader indicating the next presentation segment(s) to be presented, transmits Internet presentation control signals to each of the client nodes identifying the next collection of corresponding versions of video segments from which each client node is to select a video segment for presenting. Additionally, the host node coordinates any accompanying audio portion for this segment so that the timing for the presentation of these audio and video portions of the segment(s) are synchronized.
Moreover, during a presentation a host node provides a leader of the presentation with the ability to establish and control audience member involvement in the presentation. In particular, in the Telephony/Internet embodiment, this aspect of the invention is provided by the leader controlling the functionality of one or more phone bridges through which all the audio communication during the presentation may be routed. Accordingly, at any point the leader can speak into a microphone and broadcast his/her live voice to the audience members through the phone bridge(s). This live voice audio is automatically mixed with any segment audio concurrently being provided by the phone bridge(s). The leader can control the volume of the segment audio routed through the phone bridge(s) via controls at a leader control station (or simply xe2x80x9cleader stationxe2x80x9d). When enabled by one of the phone bridges, the leader can also control the relative volume of his/her microphone. Otherwise the audio presentation portion routed through the phone bridge(s) is balanced by the automatic gain control on the phone bridge(s).
It is also an aspect of the present invention that any audience member can xe2x80x9crequest the microphone,xe2x80x9d from the leader to speak to the presentation audience. Accordingly, the leader has the ability to allow an audience member to speak to the entire audience. The leader can, of course, also choose to stop such audience participation at any time. Thus, the presentation leader may enable and disable audience member involvement during the presentation.
It is also an aspect of the present invention that whenever an on-screen question is answered by audience members, the results are automatically collected and can be graphed. The leader can choose to display the graphical results to all of the audience members. An audience profile database may be created with the data obtained from each audience member. Note that the audience profile database is maintained beyond any one presentation if such is desired.
It is yet another aspect of the present invention that in parallel with all of the other types of interactions between presentation members, text messaging between the leader and any or all of the audience members is done through a messaging window. Further, audience members can send private messages to the leader as well as each other. These messages can be read during the presentation without interrupting the flow of the presentation.
In another embodiment of the present invention, note that both the video and audio portions for a presentation may be provided by the Internet. Moreover, the present embodiment and the Telephony/Internet embodiment discussed above may be intermixed during a presentation so that some clients may receive the entire presentation via the Internet (more generally, via a communications network having physical transport and protocol(s) for supporting multimedia presentations) whereas other clients may receive the audio portion of the presentation via telephony transmissions of conventional voice communication through a telephone handset.
Thus, audience members may simultaneously receive a coordinated sequence of multimedia data controlled by the leader to be displayed, e.g., by an Internet browser such as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer. Moreover, the present invention supports standard media types, e.g., GIF animation, as well as plug-in components such as Java and Shockwave for presenting the data (audio, graphic images, animation and video) in real time at an audience member""s browser. Furthermore, several variations of presentation content can be delivered based on, e.g., the current bandwidth available and the client""s affiliated network server(s).
Accordingly, the following advantages are provided by the present invention.
(3.1) Allocated Bandwidth for Server Data Availability:
The present invention allows the leader to selectively organize the number of audience members drawing data from a particular communications network server. By limiting the number of audience members on such a server to no more than 75, and controlling the presentation services provided to audience members, presentation related data availability is enhanced for audience members.
(3.2) Enhanced Reliability Through Distributed Components:
The present invention supports presentation content being distributed to any number of communications network (web) servers for enhanced reliability. Thus, if one of these network servers becomes inaccessible during a presentation, the present invention utilizes a notion of xe2x80x9cvirtual serversxe2x80x9d (i.e., a collection of a number of communications network servers from which presentation data can be selectively transmitted) for determining an alternative communications network server. Accordingly, this allows the clients (audience members) using the affected communications network server to be switched to another network server in the virtual server collection during the presentation.
(3.3) Evens out xe2x80x9cBurstingxe2x80x9d of Data by Distributing Its Delivery:
Although each segment of a presentation is treated as a unique (multi)media element, the present invention is capable of delivering an entire collection of presentation segments to a client node while the presentation is being performed. This enables a more smooth flow of data during the presentation even though the segments may be transferred to client nodes in bursts.
(3.4) Monitors Transmission Bandwidth and Alternate Data:
Even with enhanced presentation data availability and distributed communications network (e.g. web) servers, there is still the possibility of data delays from a slow network server of a saturated communications network (e.g., Internet) service provider. Accordingly, the present invention monitors: (a) characteristics of network transmissions of presentation materials to client nodes, e.g., the transmission network bandwidth (e.g., the data transmission rate), and (b) the amount of data cached on each client""s node. Thus, when the data required for a segment is not timely cached prior to its intended performance at a client""s node, alternate segment data is automatically requested from the communications network by the client node. In particular, the client node may request the segment data from an alternate communications network server through network address (URL) selection of the alternate communications network server.
(3.5) Allows Presentation Participants to Reconnect and Synchronize with a Presentation in Progress:
If a presentation participant is disconnected from the communications network (e.g., Internet) during a presentation, there is a simple reconnect option to put the participant back in the presentation synchronized with the rest of the participants. Note that since the audio portion may be provided via a separate telephony (voice communication) network, it is likely that the disconnected participant is able to maintain the continuity of the presentation.
(3.6) Utilizes Controlled Client Requests:
For a given presentation, the present invention directs each client node to request presentation content from a given set of communications network servers rather than having such servers push presentation content to the client node. Among other advantages, this enables dynamic control of the pace of the presentation by a presentation leader while each client node selects specific display materials to attain that pace. Moreover, this strategy of requesting presentation content is typically not blocked by network firewalls such as are common in communicating with secure corporate intranets.
(3.7) Allows a Presentation to be Provided in Several Languages Simultaneously:
The present invention""s distributed network processing architecture makes it possible to present concurrently a presentation with content provided in natural languages specific to the audience members. For example, for the same presentation performance, different audience members may have the audio portion of the presentation presented in different languages, e.g., English and Japanese. Moreover, the video content (e.g., on HTML pages) can be specified so that written text provided in the presentation can be displayed in different natural languages, depending on audience member preference.
(3.8) Cooperates with Firewalls:
The present invention allows confidential presentation data to be kept within a corporate intranet behind a firewall (i.e., a network security feature that restricts communications with devices not included in the intranet, and in particular, that restricts the access to data stored within the intranet). Thus, the present invention allows a show or presentation to be controlled externally from the firewall, while at least the confidential data remains within the firewall and is presented to only those within the firewall under the direction of a leader that is potentially outside the firewall. Further, because the present invention employs a xe2x80x9cclient-requestxe2x80x9d technology, where each presentation member""s browser requests information from a communications network server, typically data transmissions in response to such requests are not blocked by most firewalls.
Other features and benefits of the invention will become apparent from the detailed description and the accompanying figures herein.